


Re-wind

by Bard



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ankh-Morpork, Clocks, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bard/pseuds/Bard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lobsang wasn't always happy. Lobsang wasn't even always Lobsang.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re-wind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HardModePlus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardModePlus/gifts).



_Lobsang looked._

.......

The largest storeroom in the Clockmakers’ guildhall had a very big lock.

While the guild’s various apprentices and foundlings tended to be trustworthy, meticulous children, some things were best left inaccessible to all but the keenest, most seasoned minds.1 So crystals of all kinds, silver and gold for inlaying, and shelves upon shelves of rare old manuals sat untouched, gathering dust,unseen by any student below journeyman status. 

Except for Jeremy Clockson, age 11, who at the moment sat leaning against a shelf with his head against his knees. In different circumstances, the rare Forecks Clocks2 inches behind him would’ve commanded his full attention; currently all they did was wobble as his shoulders shook. 

Getting in had been easy. Locks, in the end, were just an enclosed form of clockwork—carefully arranged parts, meant to move in a very specific way. And Jeremy was _good_ with clockwork. It only took a few experimental minutes and a purloined size .05 scratch awl until he heard a very satisfying _click_ and the heavy oak door swung open. Then, finally, he had a place to sit and cry without risking another run-in with junior apprentice Tommy Naughton, age 13. 

It wasn’t fair. All he’d done was tell the class that Naughton wasn’t describing the annealing process _quite right_. Oral midterms were very important for group learning, and even Professor Ainsley hadn’t noticed the mistake until Jeremy pointed it out. The professor even thanked him, and told the class they could learn a thing or two from him! 3 He’d felt very proud of himself, and that buzz of pride remained until two hours afterward, at which point Naughton found Jeremy in the guild’s study, called him a stupid foundling bastard, and punched him in the head. Then he tried to steal Jeremy’s pocketwatch, but as big and strong as Naughton was, he wasn’t nearly as fast as his quarry and could only curse at Jeremy as the younger boy fled.

Jeremy ran through the halls until he found the one place even Naughton would be afraid to follow him. Now he sat, tears on his cheeks and a lump on his head, and let out a few years’ suffering all at once, sobbing into his knees. He lived in a building full of machines meant to be exact and reliable, but the people working on them were so often imprecise and erratic. The clocks, for all their apparent complexity, made perfect sense: _this_ gear interlocked with that gear, _this_ pendulum oscillated at _that_ interval, _this_ imp answered at _this_ moment.

The people around him, on the other hand, were unpredictable. When Naughton hauled him out of his seat, he’d expected the other children to rush to his aid. All of them declined, which was just absurd. For _years_ , he’d corrected them on mistakes whether they asked him to or not. For _years,_ he’d ensured the bunkroom alarm clocks never let them oversleep. For _years_ , he’d reminded professors when they forgot to assign homework. He’d been nothing but helpful!

It made no sense, and as he thought about it, his sense of grief subsided, slowly replaced by a growing fury that knotted up his stomach and tensed up his body. The shaking and sobs ceased; he rose, wiped his face with one clenched hand, then cried out in frustration and hammered both fists down on the shelf across from him.

Dozens of clocks shook, shedding years of dust.

Then, one after another, dozens of clocks woke up.4 Heavy clicks from a Quirmish Grandmother Clock mixed with the yawns and complaints of long-sleeping imps, both which mixed with the thrumming of a series of metal rolling ball clocks. It was a pure wall of sound, a cacophony of time. He flinched as clock after clock competed for his attention. It felt profoundly wrong. Clocks out of order, timers untended…to Jeremy’s ears, their ticks and chimes and burbles may as well have been screams. 

Loudest of all was the cuckoo clock5 in front of him, which apparently thought it was 5 PM. Without thinking, he snatched the chirping thing off the shelf and yanked the back open, shoving his hand into the works. Jeremy barely even noticed the pain as his fingers jammed the gears; all he felt was the rhythm of the clock, struggling to move against his grip, pulsing like a heartbeat. Awkwardly clutching the clock to his side, he fished out his pocketwatch and checked the time. Then he set down the watch, fiddled with the gears, and a moment later the cuckoo’s noises ceased. On its face was 7:13, the same as his watch, and for a moment everything felt right with the world.

Of course, the surrounding noise remained terrible. He looked from the cuckoo to the heavy oak door expecting aghast faces, scolding teachers, maybe even Naughton coming to finish the job. Instead he saw no one. He didn’t even hear jingling keys or running footsteps. It was just him and a row of clunking, whirring, humming, clattering clocks. 

He looked at the cuckoo again, ticking peacefully alongside with his watch. Then he stared, baffled, at a clock repair kit laid out beside it, full of awls and keys and broaches. It looked brand new, as did the bottles of oil and cleaner on the shelf below. Where did those come from? How had he not noticed them before? Jeremy looked down the row of clocks, extending all the way to the distant back of the guildhall’s largest storeroom, and suddenly those questions didn’t matter. Tools in one hand, pocketwatch in the other, he marched to the next clock. Over the next three hours, he was shocked by his own efficiency: no matter how long resetting a clock took, he’d check his watch and see he’d only used a minute or two.

At 10:13, Jeremy Clockson set down his tools, stood back, and listened to the most wonderful sound he’d ever heard:

**_Tick_.**

It was the happiest moment of his life. And it seemed to go on forever.

.......

Yesterday night, a watchman sat to take his ten-minute nap and, when his partner woke him, felt he’d only slept a few moments. Last year, Lord Vetinari found his next appointment beginning thirty seconds earlier than he’d expected. Next week, a laborer in Klatch won’t even notice the sun setting until it’s already down, and remark to his coworkers “time goes fast when you’re having fun, eh boys? Eh?”6 Several people wondered and will wonder, “Where the hell did the time go?”

 _Now, later, and then, the anthromorphic personification of Time felt a_ little _guilty. Until he watched Jeremy smile_ _._

 

1Which, it stood to reason,  _had_ to be the people with the keys. Or else they wouldn’t have had the keys.

2Powered by ale.

3Teachers often do this; whether they’re tone-deaf to the realities of the playground or simply wish to punish overly-clever students remains up for debate.

4Except, thankfully, for Bloody Stupid Johnson’s famous Self-Igniting Wooden Tinder Candle Clock at the end of the row.

5The disc’s earliest cuckoo clocks were wildly inaccurate, though accuracy later improved when legendary clockmaker Herman Pender suggested using a mechanical cuckoo instead of a live one.

6Every office has one.


End file.
